In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself. (Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 359)

What should we make of this final sentence in Carl Jung’s autobiography that he wrote toward the end of his life? Perhaps more than anything else, it illustrates the nature of paradox inherent in Jungian psychology and the process of individuation.

Individuation and an increase in consciousness in some cases can sometimes feel like going against your own nature. A fish may swim against the flow of the river one day, but with the flow on another. Becoming familiar with yourself last year and discovering things about you anew, may mean becoming less familiar with yourself this year, as you enter a new phase of life that brings unfamiliar territory and challenges.

An oak tree will become an oak tree if left untouched. However, with careful pruning, its center opens up allowing light to penetrate inside and perhaps even the pruning can help to develop a stronger branch structure and the oak tree takes a different shape. It becomes something else, in a sense.

This idea, I think, is what Jung meant when he said in old age, “…revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.” Herein lies the paradox of the nature of individuation. As insight into self and your own nature increases, it can also at times feel like you are living a parallel path against your nature or you feel like you are going “against the flow.”

But this paradox is at the core of individuation, which can also be described as a deep spiritual path. In other words, it’s holding the tension of the opposites and allowing the tendency of self to change–an enantiodromia. It’s going with nature and against nature at the same time.

As I write these words, I see a man with a gun (a local sheriff) strapped to his waist walking down the meandering trail by the river across from me. A fitting image for illustrating the paradoxical nature of individuation.

“The difference between the ‘natural’ individuation process,” wrote Jung “which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight.” (Carl Jung, Answer to Job)

Truly and deeply becoming yourself will also bring you to unfamiliar places in both your inner and outer world. You may even feel like you are becoming someone else. Do not be afraid, because you will be allowing the light to enter and you will be gaining an inner strength found nowhere else.

]]>http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2018/becoming-yourself-becoming-someone-else/feed/0Workhttp://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2018/work/
http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2018/work/#commentsTue, 03 Apr 2018 03:24:35 +0000http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/?p=3816Continue reading →]]>You are defined not by the work that you do, but by how you do the work that you do. The exact work that you do, of course, is important. But not as important as the focus, integrity and soulfulness, that you bring to your work.

Not long ago, I watched boats bringing men to and from work while I was sitting on a hilltop. Scattered along this stretch of the Pacific coast, several miles out to sea, you can see oil rigs lit up at night like beacons.

With lunch pails and bags full of gear slung over shoulders, men walk down the pier toward the boats that will take them out to sea. There, they will spend their day working on the rigs tethered to the ocean floor.

You go to work for many important reasons. You work to provide income to feed, shelter and clothe yourself and your family. You go to work for the routine and structure that it brings. You go to work because of the pull of and duty to your colleagues, who sometimes become the most trusted people in your life. And if you are lucky, you go to work to fulfill a destiny and to be a part of something much greater.

It has been said that much of the success in life is achieved from showing up each day. It doesn’t matter if you punch a time clock and light-up a welding torch, or if you are a CEO with an office over-looking Central Park.

But how you approach your work and how you engage with all the demands of your day shape you into the man or woman that you are to become. Your relationship with the work that you do will play a large role in building your character. Love your work or hate it, it does not matter, because your work will mold you into becoming the woman or man that you present to the world, and perhaps more importantly, the man or woman that you present to your own soul.

]]>http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2018/work/feed/0Dreams, Truth Serums and Anti-truth Serumshttp://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2017/dreams-truth-serums-and-anti-truth-serums/
http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2017/dreams-truth-serums-and-anti-truth-serums/#commentsWed, 06 Dec 2017 02:40:41 +0000http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/?p=4409Continue reading →]]>Just the other day I walked by two men who appeared to be homeless and whose conversation caught my attention. One man said, “You know they have truth serums and anti-truth serums.” I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but I heard enough to make me wonder.

If there were such things as truth serums and anti-truth serums, how would you be different? How would your day be different? How would your relationships be different? In my imagination these men were speaking of a world where there was a liquid serum that could be injected into people to either protect them from all things not true, or the opposite, keep them from knowing the truth. A world with no truth would be a dangerous world indeed.

A serum is a watery fluid obtained from separating blood. Antiserums are prepared from the blood of an animal that has been exposed to a specific disease and have developed specific antibodies. When these antibodies are injected into the animal, it transfers immunity to disease. In other words, a serum is used to protect against disease.

Now perhaps more than ever, there is something like a disease process keeping you away from your own truth. The collective world noise infiltrates your world like an insidious cancer.

Carl Jung said, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” Put another way is that the truth can still be found inside when lies abound outside.

It is imperative and especially in times of crisis that you look toward your dreams of the night, to help to guide your day with a focus on your own truth. Dreams provide a light to show the way amidst the lies and untruths of the day.

Your dreams are like a serum. They filter your experience and emotion from your day. They separate lies, falsehoods, and untruths and expose them to the truth from your soul. Paying attention to your dreams and the filter-like role they play in your psyche is doing your part to tend to the world soul.

A 36 year old professional woman had a dream in which she was writing a book with her boss. She awoke from this dream afraid and worried. In real life, she was beginning to question her boss and his leadership style. She felt she was being absorbed and overtaken by untruths and lies. Upon closer examination of this dream and her approach toward her work and her boss, she realized that she needed to find her own way at work keeping in mind the need to be careful, but also realizing that she was losing her own soul by not behaving and leading at work in a way that was right for her and in congruence with her own soul.

The dream for her was a wake-up call and a reminder that she was too enmeshed with her boss and his style. She was beginning to live a lie at work. She had been moving away from her own truth. Instead, she realized from working with the dream, she needed to “write her own book” and in a way originating from her own psyche and the truth that she could find there.

Dreams function as a serum-like component of the psyche. Dreams can be like “disease” protection from lies and falsehoods that can act like diseases of the soul. Pay attention to your dreams and the messages from inside since they can right your course and rescue you from the lies and the anti-truths that are antithetical to living your life with soul.

]]>http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2017/dreams-truth-serums-and-anti-truth-serums/feed/0The Red Ribbon (A Short Story of Trauma, Dreams and Healing)http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/the-red-ribbon-a-short-story-of-trauma-dreams-and-healing-2/
http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/the-red-ribbon-a-short-story-of-trauma-dreams-and-healing-2/#commentsFri, 09 Sep 2016 14:23:01 +0000http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/?p=4368Continue reading →]]>I could not breathe. Hot, tired and afraid, I was. Trapped in the middle of a crowd of strangers in an airport—people looking at one another more from suspicion than from wonder. Me—held in my mother’s arms while being touched and bumped by bags and elbows.

There, pushing through the crowd, a man, whom I did not know. Was he coming toward me with a red ribbon? I did not know since I was only seventeen months old.

It was in a dream twenty-seven years later that I saw the red ribbon again. My mother had told me the story of the red ribbon when I was old enough to remember stories and it was after the telling and retelling of this story that I imagined myself like I described above. The story of the red ribbon happened like this my mother said:

Your father and I were with you and we were in a crowded airport during the summertime. You were running up and down an aisle between chairs as we waited at the gate for our plane to board. Somewhere at the airport, I’m not sure where, you found the red ribbon.

You ran with the red ribbon, holding the ribbon between your fingers as it trailed behind you, twirling. Up and down the aisle you ran, smiling and laughing. Your father and I were delighted that you found a toy to keep you occupied.

Somewhere between having lunch prior to our flight and the walk to the airport Gate waiting area, you lost the red ribbon. You cried and cried. Then, as we were waiting in a crowd of people to board our plane, a young man approached us. His outstretched hand held the red ribbon. He had a kind smile on his face while you reached out to take the ribbon from his hand.

Flash ahead to the year before my twenty-seventh birthday, just after I had married. My new husband and I were more in love than I thought possible. It was August and we had planned a backpacking trip to the British Columbia mountains for our honeymoon. We hiked up to a mountain lake that he had been to as a teenager. He had memories of translucent, blue-turquoise water that sparkled and was so clear that you could see the color of the stones on the bottom of the lake from forty feet deep.

Under the mountain stars, on the second night of our honeymoon, the full moon bright, its light shining on water’s surface, we walked down from our tent by the lake to a beach. We took off our clothes and entered the cold water lake. We swam in the lake for ten, maybe fifteen long minutes before coming together to embrace in the waist-deep water.

It was then that I heard the noise, a light click as from a metal latch on a door falling back into place. This followed by a deafening bang ripping through the clear, crisp, star-filled night sky. I felt my new husband’s body now limp in my arms. Blood ran down my wet chest into the lake’s water as I stood shocked with my new husband’s dead body held in my arms.

The days, weeks and months following the brutal murder of my husband were inconsequential because it felt as if it was not me living in this surreal nightmare. It was as if I was outside of myself looking in at the person and life I once knew. The police eventually found the man that killed my husband and later told me that the murderer was a drifter, high on PCP at the time of the murder. He had a fascination with guns, they said. There appeared to be no motive. I now know that evil works in such ways. What else would you call this act of murder? But in truth, I did not care about these things now. I did not care about anything, for that matter.

Seven months after my husband died in my arms, I dreamed of the red ribbon from my childhood. In the dream I was falling and falling and falling in an ominous blackness. I might have been between two cliff edges. A hand reached down from above and in the palm of the hand, a red ribbon. I reached for the ribbon as I fell, but my hand couldn’t quite reach it.

I woke from this dream and wept. Softly at first, and then full body sobs. I had tried to cry since the murder of my husband, but tears would not come. The red ribbon image though, elicited a river of tears as I recalled the image from the story my mother had told me of the kind man in the airport handing me my red ribbon.

Walking home from work one day, shortly after dreaming of the red ribbon, I noticed a smallish rock the size of a grapefruit sitting by the edge of a concrete wall. Cream-colored, with streaks of brown, almost red, this particular rock seemed like something that did not quite belong there by the side of this wall.

I took the rock home with me and put it in the corner of my back yard next to a weathered blue bench. In the days and weeks that followed, I found myself sitting on the blue bench often. I would sit on the bench and stare at the rock.

Spending time on the blue bench and meditating on the rock occupied much of my free time. When I would travel for my job I started noticing other rocks. After meetings finished and others went out for dinner and drinks, I would return to my hotel room, change clothes, and find the nearest trail or path to walk where I would look for local rocks. I saw red rocks, slate-colored rocks, black rocks, all sizes, textures and shapes.

My pre-occupation with rocks brought unexpected comfort. I was pulled deeper into myself and to a place that was yet unknown to me, but beyond the numbing of grief and recurrent images of horror.

About one year after beginning this new ritual of searching for rocks, I was at home one spring morning, sitting on my blue bench meditating on the cream-colored rock with reddish streaks weaving around it. I recalled again my mother’s story of the red ribbon. I thought of my own dream of the red ribbon and I wept some more. But this time something was different, I felt something stirring deep in my soul—a lost part of myself that I had not felt since the morning prior to my husband’s murder.

I don’t know how best to describe this feeling. It was a feeling that was not strong— it was faint, but it was real. I guess you could say that I felt like perhaps I would again find a life that contained joy and love. Until now, after losing my husband in one of the most horrible ways imaginable, nobody could convince me that this would be possible.

I dreamed that night again of the red ribbon. Like my first dream of the red ribbon, I was falling next to a cliff edge. It was dark and a man’s strong hand holding a red ribbon reached down from above. I grabbed for the ribbon in his hand but this time, I caught his hand in the dream, and the next thing that I knew, I was safely on the ground.

When I awoke in the morning after this dream, I went to my backyard with my cup of coffee and in the corner of the yard where I had placed my cream-colored rock with reddish streaks; the rock had split in two.

So right he was. I was asked last month by Colin McNeil of Metro NewsCanada whether or not I would be interested in being interviewed by him for a story he was writing for Metro News on a Jungian interpretation of the franchise Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT). His story would in part be in preparation for an upcoming release of a new TMNT film.

Being familiar with the TMNT franchise by name only, I was not so sure about the project ahead even though I had quickly said “yes” to the interview. However, as Dr. Corbett so nicely put it, all films do have Jungian themes when looked at through a Jungian lens.

When viewing film through a Jungian lens, we are reminded that archetypes never go away. Archetypes are stable and re-form with time, arising again and again in story and image in the films that we go to see and in the films that touch our hearts and minds.

]]>http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-through-a-jungian-lens-colin-mcneil-of-metro-news-canada-interviews-dr-howlin/feed/0Learning to See in the Darkhttp://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/learning-to-see-in-the-dark/
http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/learning-to-see-in-the-dark/#commentsWed, 02 Mar 2016 02:13:05 +0000http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/?p=4288Continue reading →]]>There is a fish that lives deep in the ocean dark
The fish has evolved over time
To “see” in the deep
With a lantern as a light
Just in front of its eyes

A young man
Who knew about this strange fish
Had a big dream

In the dream
He was riding his motorcycle
On a country road

With dark descending
The motorcycle headlights went out

He could not see
So he pulled to the side
Of the road

He climbed off of the motorcycle
And he entered into tall grasses
In the roadside ditch

Parting the tall grasses
With his bare hands
He walked and pushed deeper
Into a dark forest

On the other side of a fence
Dark had descended

The light from the stars and moon
Did not point the way

But he breathed in the forest air
He walked naked, always in the dark of the night
While the forest plants and animals touched his bare skin

He walked further and deeper into the forest
For over sixty years, he walked

An old man now
He came upon the same fence and motorcycle
And climbed over the fence
Up onto his old motorcycle

He rode out of the ditch
Into the night
On the same quiet country road

He turned on the motorcycle headlights
The lights still did not work
But it did not matter
He had learned to see in the dark

]]>http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/learning-to-see-in-the-dark/feed/0Dead Woodhttp://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/dead-wood/
http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/dead-wood/#commentsSat, 06 Feb 2016 16:21:51 +0000http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/?p=4267Continue reading →]]>If your life was like a tree, you would learn to be a master gardener. You would take the time to prune away all of your dead wood. Like the life of a tree, your process of growth and change can be hindered by the dead wood that is left behind. And like a tree that sheds its leaves each fall to prepare for a time of dormancy and then new growth, you must remove your dead wood to make room for sunlight, open sky and new pathways for psyche and soul.

Since your life is like a tree, to prepare for a new season of growth will require that you take the time to destroy your dead wood. The human psyche is forward looking. Dead wood can get in the way of the new.

Some relationships can be like dead wood. You hold onto them thinking there is still life there. But they are dead wood too. If you do not cut off this limb, it may fall and crush any new wood that is forming.

Memories of trauma and psychic wounds can be like dead wood. The job in this case is not necessarily to remove the dead wood, but to tend to the injuries like a careful pruner would do with a sapling. Like scar tissue from dead wood, your trauma and wounds need to be carefully tended to and pruned to make way for tender new growth.

The dark of depression can be like dead wood. Of course as a general rule, we have no conscious control of depression and the symptoms that it brings. Sometimes though, a depression lingers long after it has run its course or served its purpose. A lingering depression can be like dead wood too. This kind of depression should be cut away as it no longer serves a purpose.

Meaninglessness can be an indicator of having too much dead wood in your life. A life with little or no meaning can sometimes mean that your dead wood has remained for far too long. Sometimes the meaninglessness comes from the wrong job, or a job that you have simply outgrown. Dreams can indicate a way forward–a way that can move you toward new career growth.

A depressed 33 year old woman dreamed of a dead magnolia tree in her front yard. The dead wood for her symbolized the death of an old worldview. She was especially fond of the magnolia flower so seeing the dead tree in her dream was a nightmarish image. She worked with this dream and discovered that she needed to cut out thoughts and views of her life and her worldview that were like dead wood. Cutting out these beliefs and views opened the way for a very creative time for her which led her into a new meaningful job.

Every single one of us has symbolic dead wood in our lives that needs to be pruned, trimmed, sawed or hacked away. Your clearing job with your own dead wood may be like an afternoon in the rose garden with a pruning shears and a glass of lemonade waiting for you afterwards. Or, it may be more like calling the tree service with the two-ton truck, chainsaws and overhead crane. In either case, dead wood is interfering with your life now and it is time for it to go to make way for the budding possibilities.

]]>http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/dead-wood/feed/0Transformation and Image in Adolescent Jungian Psychotherapyhttp://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2014/transformation-and-image-in-adolescent-jungian-psychotherapy/
http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2014/transformation-and-image-in-adolescent-jungian-psychotherapy/#commentsWed, 17 Dec 2014 03:03:27 +0000http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/?p=3943Continue reading →]]>Society needs to be shaken by the aspirations of those who are not responsible.Donald Winnicott

The image is to Jungian psychotherapy as thinking is to cognitive therapy. But there is a difference. In cognitive therapy, it is assumed that one of the events that leads to maladaptive functioning and symptomology is faulty thinking. Therefore, one of the tasks of the psychotherapist is to help the client examine and then change his or her thinking around certain areas.

In Jungian psychotherapy, the image is never assumed to be faulty. In Jungian therapy, the image stands on its own and can lead the therapy where it needs to go. In conducting psychotherapy with adolescents this can be even more true. Sometimes when working with adolescents and when all other methods of talk therapies, environmental changes and medications fail, the psyche produces an image that guides and rescues the adolescent from the constraints that desperate parents, probation departments, community resources and well-intentioned therapists attempt to put in place.

Jane (not her real name) was 17 years old when her parents brought her to see me. Her parents had just discovered that among other troublesome behaviors, she had been experimenting with drugs. They were shocked to make this discovery. Though her parents didn’t say it, it was clear that they were questioning their own parenting abilities and blaming themselves. Coming from a tight, extended family, the impact and feelings of shame that this new discovery had on everyone in the family was palpable.

Jane’s parents explained that until recently, Jane had been a gifted girl who did not cause them much worry while receiving straight A’s in school. After meeting with the parents first, I began individual therapy with Jane, meeting with the family as a unit occasionally.

Developmentally, Jane was at an age where she would begin to form her own identity separate from her well-intentioned but controlling parents. The immense conflict that this brought out in Jane was not to be underestimated. Jane felt deep guilt for bringing on what she perceived as shame for the family. On the other hand, she was angry and felt “controlled” by her parents and extended family. Among other strong emotions, Jane started to have thoughts and feelings of cutting on her body. This was particularly worrisome as Jane’s parents attempts to set strong limits and make environmental changes, like changing schools, were ineffective. The psychotherapy also was difficult and without clear progress.

After about six months of psychotherapy with Jane, she shared a dream. Since I work with dreams regularly with most clients, I had asked Jane previously about her dreams. She indicated that she did not usually remember them. Jane’s important dream was a short one as far as dreams go. In the dream, Jane was swimming underwater in the ocean with a mermaid who was holding her hand. Jane’s affect noticeably brightened when she told me the dream with an incredulous smile on her face.

After having this dream and discussing it, rapid healing occurred. Although we discussed the dream and the image of the mermaid, it was not my interpretation or discussion that was the catalyst for change and transformation. The catalyst for the transformation was the image of the mermaid and the container of the psychotherapy as a safe place to welcome imagery and the numinosum–an awe-inducing experience seemingly produced from beyond self. The mermaid image was autonomous, a product of the innate capacity of the psyche to produce images that have the potential to heal and transform.

In the weeks and months following this dream, Jane’s attitude toward her parents and circumstances changed. The thoughts and feelings about cutting dissipated and then went away altogether. She stopped using and defending her experimentation with drugs. And finally, she ended and gained insight into the emotionally harmful relationship that she was having with a boy her own age. The therapy ended about nine months after Jane shared the dream. The last few sessions were focused on her preparations for attending a university while she continued to hold the gains made since her mermaid dream.

Jane’s dream and imagery is an example of what can occur with adolescents in Jungian psychotherapy and when a healing image is produced from the unconscious. Next, I will look at the case of a 14 year old male, who I will call John.

John’s case is one where imagery through memories from an experience helped him to heal. John’s story was not so different from many children and adolescent who are brought to psychotherapy by foster parents or child advocates. John was bounced around from foster home to foster home for most of his life. As one could imagine, he had great difficulties attaching to new foster parents and his placements did not last long. Part of the reason for this was because of John’s behaviors that foster parents found extremely difficult to help manage and change. John had seen therapists before, many, in fact, and with disappointing results.

When I first met John, I didn’t have much confidence that the outcome of the therapy with me would be much different. From the beginning, John made all efforts imaginable to push me away too—just like he had been “pushed away” from so many failed foster home environments. I hung in there with him, although it was not easy and it tested my tolerance to the end. I tried all of the counseling strategies including family therapy with his current foster parents. Mostly though, these efforts were unsuccessful.

Then during one session John relayed an experience that he had recently while ice skating on a frozen lake. He had not skated before and talked about how he fell down over and over, but that each time he got back up, brushed himself off, and tried again. Next, he told me about the song that he had been listening to almost constantly lately. It was a new, popular song by Chumbawamba called “Tubthumping” with a refrain that went like this, “I get knocked down, but I get up again, You’re never gonna keep me down.”

And the course of psychotherapy here too changed rather quickly and in the right direction. John’s extremely challenging and oppositional behaviors in the therapy sessions decreased significantly. He started to discuss his difficulties and associated feelings that he encountered with others while at school and in the foster home.

Our therapeutic relationship and the therapy itself, was now anchored and contained with the memory and associated images from his ice skating and the song about getting knocked down but getting back up again. For John, this experience, memory and image, served as a metaphor and a symbol for John’s current phase of life and helped him to form an attachment to me and others.

Adolescence is a time when the adolescent is forming his or her own unique identify partly shaped by parents, culture, and society, but mostly shaped from within. When we clamp down too hard on the experience and image-shaping developing self within, all sorts of disasters can occur without.

As Winnicott (Frankel, 1998, p. 218) writing on adolescents said, “Society needs to be shaken by the aspirations of those who are not responsible.” The adolescent psyche will break through the rules and adult efforts of containing behavior that threatens and frightens us. We will be “shaken” sometimes by adolescent behavior but we must endure this shaking, and not only seek to suppress it (with the exception of course of violence or self-harming behavior like cutting).

We cannot always control and contain frightening adolescent behavior. Instead we need to look to the innate capacity of the adolescent psyche to heal and guide. Indeed the adolescent psyche has the capacity to shake society when it needs to be shaken. But like the healing image of the mermaid in my client’s dream, the adolescent psyche can also mend the parts of the adolescent that are broken.

]]>http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2014/the-psychology-of-the-unconscious-a-love-poem/feed/2Welcome to Your Processhttp://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2014/welcome-to-your-process/
http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2014/welcome-to-your-process/#commentsMon, 15 Sep 2014 02:02:09 +0000http://www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/?p=4130Continue reading →]]>“Called or not called, the God will be there,” says the inscription above the door to Carl Jung’s home and on his tombstone. The same can be said for your own psychological process. Name it what you may, choose to accept or deny it, but there is a deep, potent, and vital psychological process taking place below the threshold of your everyday life.

As the veil is lifted, new clients to Jungian psychotherapy are often both excited and afraid of this fact. Through Jungian psychotherapy, and its exploration of the world of dreams and the unconscious, clients without previous exposure to a deeper process, are introduced to a whole new world.

This world contains many wonders and precious gems. Accepting and embracing this deeper process has pulled many in despair from the precipice of the abyss. But like any good story and journey, this new world will also contain obstacles and encounters with ideas and images that will frighten and scare you.

What you choose to name this deep process does not matter so much. Naming the process depends, of course, on your world view and belief system. If you have a religious or spiritual background and belief system, you can call the process a “spiritual process” or the will of God.

If you choose to use the language of Jungian psychology, you may decide to call the process the unfolding of the archetype of the Self, or the process of individuation.

What you choose to name a thing or a process does not change its structure, function or nature. Though there are many good reasons to enter Jungian psychotherapy, or any psychotherapy, you may decide to do so because of unbearable psychological or emotional pain and suffering.

Jungian psychotherapy, perhaps more than other modes or styles of psychotherapy, invites you to explore deeper, unconscious aspects of yourself to help discern the meaning and direction that may lay hidden there.

Choosing to begin Jungian psychotherapy is an important decision. It has the potential to lead you on a journey of healing and discovery unlike any journey that you have taken thus far. You may relearn to feel deeper and to love deeper. You may also decide to accept more challenges and take more risks. Jungian psychotherapy aims not necessarily to “cure” any psychological symptoms, but oftentimes symptoms dissipate or disappear altogether nonetheless.

A fifty-five year old man who had suffered a series of devastating losses over a short period of time had become overwhelmed with feelings of grief and despair. Uncharacteristically for him, he started to have thoughts of his own death and he entertained thoughts of suicide. He had never attempted suicide.

And then he shared a dream. A dream that Jungians call an “anima” dream. The dream:

Somehow I had met Stevie Nicks. She told me of a purse (her purse) with something extremely valuable. Somehow it ended up in a subway station after an accident. I happened to be at the subway station and in a chance-in-a-million, I found her purse.

This dream was inviting him to accept and embrace his feminine or feeling part of his personality. With this new insight and dream image, this man who had had no previous knowledge of Jungian concepts, was able to find a thread of meaning and emotional experience that lifted him above the recent thoughts of death and suicide. I continued seeing him in psychotherapy for about two more years, and the suicidal thoughts never returned during this time.

For this man, a dream from a deep place within, provided the inner support and meaning to help him cope with his immense emotional pain and loss. He chose to follow his own deeper process and the process provided relief and healing and brought him back from the brink of a dangerous psychological place.

If you are thinking about beginning psychotherapy, consider choosing a Jungian psychotherapist, or analyst. It does not matter so much the credential. What does matter is whether or not it feels right after the initial phone call and/or meeting with the psychotherapist. If it doesn’t feel right, do not return to that therapist and do not lose hope. Try another therapist and move on. Like finding any good, deep relationship that has the potential for transformation, it may take more than one attempt to find the right person.

If you decide not to look deeper at your life and your psychological pain—to turn over the rocks and look underneath— just remember, “Called or not called, the God will be there.” If on the other hand, you decide to call a Jungian psychotherapist and begin a journey of healing and self-discovery, “Welcome to your process.”